Internet application development includes techniques and methods that differ from traditional object-oriented application development.
One method of Internet application development utilizes a tag-based display language such as a Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). However, the static nature of HTML pages makes interactive components for World Wide Web (Web) pages difficult to build and to reuse. Another method of Internet application development utilizes Dynamic HTML (DHTML). DHTML provides for interactive components through a combination of HTML, script code and a document object model. The script code allows web authors to write source code that manipulates items displayed by a web browser.
Object-oriented programming languages, such as the Java programming language, are different from scripting languages. Traditional software developers are frequently more accustomed to using an object-oriented programming model rather than an Internet programming model. In order to develop Internet applications then, traditional software developers must learn a tag-based display language such as DHTML. However, having to learn a new language reduces software development productivity.
Therefore, there is a need for a system that enables object-oriented programmers to generate tag-based procedural code without having to learn a new language. There is also a need for a system that allows software developers to generate Dynamic HTML while writing programs in the Java programming language.